In this day and age, it is common knowledge that correctly breathing and optimising your breath improves your overall vitality and wellbeing. However, we also need to be aware that breathwork was not originally developed to only aid in advancing health. The original purpose of breathing exercises goes far beyond this.
The way we view health and wellbeing today is completely different from how it used to be perceived and utilised amid the times’ breathwork was originally developed. During that period in time, people did not lead the hectic lifestyles of the modern era, and longevity was never in the mainstream (this is an interesting lengthy discussion which I will leave for another article). The key point to understand is that originally breathwork was developed to support humans in achieving a specific state of consciousness, which combined with a meditation technique will guide a person into a desired experience of “expansion of consciousness”. Therefore, based on this you may then ask, but what is the positive effect of breathwork in our body?
The answer is that there are many favourable outcomes and we would probably need a book to explain it all, but we can see some immediate results. For example, considering that you may have a stressful lifestyle, that your breath is shallow, and that throughout the day you never pay attention to your breath; even from the very first breathing exercise, you will feel some changes in your body. Subconsciously you are in a state of “alert”, waiting for bad news or a situation in which your peace will be disturbed. In this constant state of fight-or-flight, your nervous system stays fully alert (an exacerbation of the sympathetic nervous system), as a result of this your level of adrenaline increases and consequently your cortisone too, creating a high level of inflammation in your body.
Most of the breathing exercises we practise at the DeRose Meditation, (not all of them, as some are designed to increase the adrenaline, which can be highly positive for people with depression), will stimulate and exacerbate the opposite force of stress in your body. Making you feel more present, reducing the undesirable “noise” in your head, providing a different and more realistic perception of what is actually going on in your life. Consequently, your stress level will reduce drastically, which in turn is much better for your health!
Some of the positive side-effects that I have received from my students include:
- I’ve been sleeping much better since I started practising breathing exercises.
- My digestion improved tremendously since I added regular breathwork to my routine.
- I’ve been performing better in challenging meetings at work.
- My level of energy is higher than ever before.
There are many other affirmative results, dependent on each person’s individual body, experiences and circumstances.
Based on this I would like to invite you to join our workshop Breathwork – Theory and Practice, on the 4th of December to discover for yourself how these codified techniques can change your life for the better!